Thaw
by maple-lake
Summary: She needs him to save himself because, she thinks, it might be the only way she can save herself.


Still desiring, we live without hope.

**- Dante (_Inferno_)**

She is tired, and not just a little edgy. Alison, that is. Alison is tired. Cameron is professional. She's hanging on by her fingernails, but she's there, on the ledge of Housedom, doing what she loves to do.

She tells herself this every day. It is her mantra, her talisman. She's doing what she loves, she tells herself. That it might end up costing her her sanity – she freezes in her thoughts. He. Him. Close by. Where?

She looks about in a way she hopes is discrete. There's a corner coming up and she suddenly knows he is around it. Lurking. Waiting for her answer to his question.

"_Friday night. You free?"_

"_Free?"_

"_Got a hot date?"_

"_We don't have a case-"_

"_Not talking about work."_

Only his question was posed mere hours ago, and she cannot understand it let alone answer it. This, this damn question – this plea, this _what!_ – comes at the height of his abnormal behavior. She's in some kind of dream that, when it really happens, twists into an unexpected nightmare.

A year ago – hell, less than a year ago – she wouldn't have needed to answer. He would have known that he had her. She would have known too, though she might have been able to lie to herself about it. But things change. They've changed. Despite his character and protestations, he has changed. And yet, despite the nearly unbelievable events of the past few months, he has predictably not changed.

She knows him, she thinks. She's certainly made a pastime out of studying him and it seems only right that she claim to have made some progress. Sometimes she is so certain that she _gets_ him – so certain that the weight of reality on her imperfectly bruised heart causes her to end up on her couch with a dark glass of thoroughly chilled wine, staring at pictures she hopes will fix her unwieldy desires in a way her logic cannot.

She is prepared for him, for his intensity, his brashness – for the force of his presence. She is familiar with his insults, his fascination with her as a trifling yet entertaining enigma in his life. She knows how to respond to moments of open hostility, to moments where she can almost hear the fear inside him freezing him from the inside out.

Like a seasoned tennis player, she sometimes gets so comfortable that she's able to make a strategic move of her own, pushing ever so gently and ever so slightly on the boundary between the _what_ that they are and the _beyond_ that, like the universe, exists more so in theory than in any kind of actual or probable reality.

But her carefully catalogued and prepared responses had not been sufficient for "House gets shot" or "House can run." House without pain – she had always felt free and safe to imagine him, so certain was she that she would never see the day. Not surprisingly, it is nothing like she imagined.

He has flirted with her in the past, but now it doesn't only "mean" something – it actually, really, _means_ something. At least to him it does. Thus, it is her turn to feel the icy grip of fear and confusion. Because if it means something to him, then she has to sit down – really sit down – and figure out if it still means something to her.

The thought terrifies her. It excites her. It's only when she's mulling it over one night with a glass of wine and pictures that the truth hits her: he's not anything like she imagined because he's not without pain. He's not better. Before she lets herself wonder if he ever will be, she wonders if he realizes that he has been healed but not cured. And it's then that she creates a response for the improbable, the unthinkable.

She's been telling herself that she's shocked, that she has no idea what to say. Only, knowing he is around the corner and that, in a few mere seconds she will come face to face with the aching eyes that so remind her of something she can't quite grasp – she can only admit to reluctance and sadness, not indecision.

She loves him – though she hates him – and that's why it's so damn painfully pleasurable. He might destroy her, and, if not for the courage-providing wine and picture nights, she might let him. But for now – for now she wants (needs) to leave him the opportunity to save himself – even if she's the only one who still thinks he can.

She turns the corner, finally, and he's standing, waiting. It still jars her to see him without a cane. Something must be wrong with the world, some emergency, some disaster. He's lost a part of himself and looks it. Unoccupied hands are stuffed into his pockets. Tension-free eyes roam her figure. A ghost of a smirk plays on his lips.

Maybe, a voice inside pleads, maybe this would be giving him what he wants – pain. Maybe it would be better to grant him pleasure instead.

"You never answered my question."

The air between them, as always, is electric. But now, since he thinks he's different, he steps forward. He's pushing the line now, only he's not pushing, he's shoving. She suddenly remembers Dante's vision of hell. She's always been alternately fascinated and horrified by the heat and intensity of the different levels all getting uglier and more boiling until, at the very center, a land of ice greets the wearisome poet.

She needs him to thaw because she needs them to thaw. She needs him to save himself because, she thinks, it might be the only way she can save herself. Looking at him - the lightness of his being, the way he rocks on the balls of his feet – she so desperately wants to give in, to feel the heat for a moment even if it leads to a frozen eternity.

"You are not well," she says softly, firmly. He lets out a baffled sigh, squints his eyes. He shakes his head, as though disappointed, and walks away with the merest of nods. She can hear his mind thinking (perhaps a beginning) – ice cracking over a deep lake.


End file.
